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Woods offers a contrary perspective to the superintendent's job

ATLANTA | In the GOP runoff for state superintendent of schools, Richard Woods promises the biggest policy change.

His first order of business would be a top-to-bottom audit of the Department of Education.

A career educator from Tifton, who has been a social-studies teacher, an athletic coach, a principal and a local curriculum director, Woods claims an insider’s perspective on public schools and an outsider’s preference for reform.

Woods is running against Mike Buck, a state Department of Education official, for the GOP nomination for state superintendent of schools in the July 22 runoff. Early voting already is underway.

When Woods ran for the same post four years ago and lost to John Barge, he opposed the federal Race to the Top grant program that included incentives for adopting the multi-state Common Core standards, and he remains opposed. Common Core is less rigorous that the standards they replaced in Georgia, he argues.

“There’s a reason it’s called ‘common’ because that’s what it is,” he says on the campaign trail.

He favors scrapping the state’s three years spent implementing Common Core, a position that has won him support from tea party groups, but a cold shoulder from business and education organizations.

Woods is no fan of the state’s tests that will be used for grading teachers as well as students. Nor is he in love with the way the state uses a set formula to fund local schools based on the number of students and the amount of attention they require. The formula has never been fully funded, he notes.

“We need to make sure we are adequately funding education,” he said.

He prefers block grants because they would give local districts the greatest spending flexibility.